National Poetry Slam Championship in Malmö, Sweden

The Teams in the Final: Göteborg, Malmö, Gotland & Huddinge

Amazing performances! Brilliant lyrics! Extraordinary people! No, I’m not talking about Eurovision Song Contest. I’m talking about what happened in Malmö in Sweden the weekend before Eurovision. I’m talking about the National Poetry Slam Championship. (SM = Svenska Mästerskapen = Swedish Championship)

I was happy to be one of 48 poets competing for 3 days and that I didn’t go through to the final 8 didn’t upset me too much. The point is not the point – the point is the poetry as the US poet Allan Wolf once pointed out. I had fun on stage and people found me entertaining. Just to be at the Nationals was a great honour as you had to win or come second at a local slam to be able to compete nationally. Above I’m performing a poem about shyness and the fear of saying hello.

Jamila Woods & Robbie Q Telfer

What I enjoyed most was to perform and watch the team pieces – there were 12 teams consisting of at least 3 people that were up on stage together. (I was part of the Växjö team.) You get it all: drama, a bit of singing, comedy, tragedy – and above all poetry. On top of that there were guest poets from Chicago: Jamila Woods & Robbie Q. Telfer, and for the brave ones there was an improv slam, a speed slam and a “Eurovision” slam where you were allowed background dancers and producers. Other highlights included the release of Oskar Hanska's poetry video and "the metaphor wrestling show".

"Metaphor Wrestling" 

If only media would focus half as much on the National Poetry Slam Championship as they do on Eurovision, I believe the world would be a better place. In Eurovision you’re not allowed to sing any political messages – when you’re poetry slamming no subject is too big or too small. It’s hard to write a good political poem, but some people are “naturally” political, like the National Slam Winner, Nino Mick, who is transgender and often writes about LGBTQ topics.

I find the Swedish Poetry Scene very open-minded and am truly impressed by the quality of the poems. I feared that I would stop performing poetry if I decided to stay in Sweden for a while, that it wouldn’t be possible without the support from the Brighton crowd that I’ve been part of for so many years, but now I feel inspired to write poems in both Swedish and English. And on a national level, I believe the Swedish Poetry Slam scene is better established than the English scene. As far as I know the National competitions aren’t as big in the UK. Next year the European Slam Championship is coming to Malmö!

MER OM SM PÅ SVENSKA

Shake the Dust

This spring I'm happy to be involved in a project called Shake the Dust run by spoken word organisation Apples & Snakes.

Shake the Dust is a celebration of the spoken word and will get young people into writing and performing their own poetry. My role is to assist another poet (the brilliant Mike Parker) delivering workshops in schools. Well, funnily enough my job description is "Shadow Poetry Coach", so for me this year is all about being a shadow (because shadowing is also what I'm going to do for my Swenglish project)

Last week I went to the first training session with poet Jacob Sam-La Rose. He insists on trying all the writing exercises himself before he tries them on his students. A very sound idea! The Poetry Coaches and their Shadows had to use their heads and pens and come up with a group piece.

Jacob calls this method "row writing": you write for a couple of minutes on a given theme and then pass the paper on to the next person. Our group came up with a very funny piece on the theme of truce called "It's easy to forgive a pet". We then performed this poem, standing on a line, looking angry at first and then moving closer together. I'm now looking forward to see what the teenagers make of this exercise ...

I won the Hammer & Tongue Poetry Slam in Brighton!

It's been a potty autumn for me ... A potty poetry autumn!
Last night I won my second poetry slam: Hammer & Tongue at Komedia in Brighton,
hosted by Rosy Carrick and Mike Parker.

I wasn't going to go out due to November Rain, but I changed my mind
and jumped on my bike to town to do a poem about trains which you can read here.

Winning the slam means that I'll be in the grand slam final on the 1st of December
battling against all the slam winners of 2011.

(if you need the toilet the potty can be found in Queens Park)

Upcoming Gigs

I'm performing at the following events:

Story Studio, Sunday 2 Oct, 8pm at Komedia, Brighton
Am one of the guest for the Feast & Fetish Theme, and will be reading my flash fiction story "Common Fetish"

Hammer & Tongue, Thursday 6 Oct, 7.30pm at Komedia, Brighton
I'm the local guest poet, warming the stage for Wilf Merttens - and fellow Swede Henry Bowen!

Tuesday 18 Oct, 8pm at Bombanes, Kemp Town, Brighton
An evening of music & poetry featuring Lou Ice, Jane Bom-Bane & Rosie Brown

Horseplay, Thursday 27 Oct, 8pm at the Black Dove, Kemp Town, Brighton
An evening of spoken word, music and random fun!

Something Wholly Inappropriate, Monday 7th Nov, 8pm at the Earth & Stars, Brighton
Hosted by Alice Shaw. I'll do a 20 minutes poetry est.

Ace Stories, Sunday 11 Dec, 6pm at Hotel Pelirocco, Brighton
More info TBC

Library's got talent, Saturday 18 Dec, Jubilee Library, Brighton
More info TBC

Double Slam in the Brighton Fringe

Hendrick's Horseless Carriage of Curiosities parked up in Jubilee Square last Friday and is leaving on Monday, so there's still a chance to get a free shot of gin. And if you write a very short story or a short poem you'll get a free gin cocktail in the bar, but you have to read it out to the barmen and barmaids!

Last weekend I took part in two slams in the above mentioned carriage as part of Brighton Fringe Festival. On the Saturday Damian Barr hosted a flash fiction slam, and me and 13 other people entered the stage to read or perform a story in less than three minutes. Not everyone agreed with the judges (Stuart Evers, Vanessa Gebbie & Niven Govinden) but it was good fun, even though the theme was somewhat depressing: "The End." My story was about a woman who wanted a divorce from her doormat husband, but the divorce couldn't go through unless the doormat exploded, and therefore my story had no end ... (Thanks to everyone on Facebook who took part in the debate whether such an expression as "exploding doormat" exists or not ...)

On the Sunday Chris Parkinson hosted a lively poetry slam. The poets had five minutes to convince the judges (Damian Barr, James Burt & Kate Shields)that their poem or poems were the best. Alison Brunette (?) became the champion after having performed a parody of the "When I'm an old woman I shall wear purple"- poem and another one about preferring sex to chocolate. At other poetry slams I've been to the audience are often asked to be the judges, so it was a bit different to have a panel of judges that kept their scores secret. I did my poem dedicated to an ex-landlord which went down well. I'm happy with both my performances and really enjoyed being on stage in Hendrick's Horseless Carriage of Curiosities!

All over the place or in one place?

If you focus on something for five years and really believe in it you're going to be successful in one way or other. That's what my ex (who gets paid to travel to tropical countries to fix computers) told me while I was working on my debut novel. And almost exactly five years after I started writing seriously I had a novel published. I did focus on my novel writing and I really believed in it. But it's not always this simple ...

What is success anyway? Are you less of a novelist if you spend five years perfecting a novel, focusing on it and really believing in it and still not getting it published ...? The optimist in me wants to believe that those people don't exist, that they didn't try hard enough .... The realist in me doesn't want to wake up because I am a dreamer ...

Another person(in his early thirties)who is a poet, MC, songwriter and musician told me that he would've been successful by now if he had focused on one thing only. I'm not sure whether to agree or disagree. Surely these areas all feed into each other, but if you're pre-occupied by making a living and having a very rich social life it's tricky. It's also matter of how much you're willing to focus, how much you're willing to offer in terms of time and money.

I've been writing seriously in English since 2007, so according to the five year focus and belief I should be published by next year. But at the moment I'm all over the place ... I'm waiting for my agent to find a publisher for UNDER THE LIP (former REPLACING ANGEL). Waiting is not a very active space to be in so in the meantime ...

*I'm making notes on a new novel, note: making notes, not actually writing

*I'm writing random poetry

*I'm working with improvising jazz musicians

*I performing poetry

*I'm reading/performing short stories

*I'm taking voice classes

*I'm going to drop-in acting classes

*I'm going to drop-in 5Rhythms dance classes

*I'm lying down in the Alexander Technique semi-supine position

*I'm reading all sorts of stuff, fact and fiction

*I'm taking more photographs than my harddrive can handle

*I'm making collages (see picture)

But above all I'm working on getting to know my body. Hence the voice classes, acting classes, dance classes and the Alexander Technique. (I can't afford to do these things every week even if I wanted to do, but I try to do at least one physical thing every week).

All my life I've lived in my head, intellectualising all my actions. Now it's time for me to get in touch with my body, and I believe this will make me a better and more confident performer. Indirectly it will also help me with my novel work as a part of "the job" is to promote your novel, do readings etc.

I took out a book from the Children's Library simply titled The Inside & Outside Guide to Your Body. I'm fascinated by the fact that under my skin there is a skeleton. It's not like I didn't know before, but I finally understand that I've got a skeleton. I'm learning to breathe.

I could skip all this body work and just plunge into working on my new novel and ignore all the other parts of me. But at the moment it's more important for me to become a whole human being.

Improvising?

I woke up this morning and thought what the hell did I do last night? Don't worry I remember it all clearly, I wasn't very drunk or anything ... I was improvising! Something I'm not very used to. I've previously blogged about doing improvised workshops with the band 4thirtythree. But last night wasn't a workshop; it was a gig. People came to the Red Roaster and paid to watch and listen to us improvise.

Luckily the band 4thirtythree improvise all the time so they are used to it and they held the night together beautifully. And somewhere between the music there were words. Some of them fitted some of them didn't. I'm surprised how we managed to make the performance flow without any particular plan. Well some of us poets had brought material (either on paper or in our heads) so it wasn't totally improvised, but we did some collaborate pieces that were happening there and then and won't ever happen again.

Talking to a guy in the audience he said that he enjoyed some bits and found other bits painful. He thought our collaborate pieces worked best, when we only spoke for about 30 seconds each and then moved on to another person, creating a stream of words. Quite a fair comment I think.

I'm mostly happy what I did/said, but I also felt that I missed the "freshness" from the workshop where I felt more free as I had not brought any material at all. I'm still questioning what the hell I was doing last night, but I feel happy for the experience. A big thank you to Tom Cunliffe for putting it all together!

It has been great working with all those talented people: 4thirtythree, Annie, Yaz, Bernie, Alison and Tom.

Rip/Cut/Torn

Wednesday 16th March

eg poetry presents.......’Rip/Cut/Torn’
The result of numerous workshops......a collaborative evening of poetry, improvised spoken word and improvised music

6 Brighton based poets meet ‘4.33’, Brighton’s most inventive music improvisation trio.
With Bernie Cremin, Lou Ice, Annie Kerr, Tom Cunliffe, Alison Boston and Yassin Zelestine

‘4.33’ (Stuart Revill, Tim Woods, Chris Parfitt).....”free of cliché... a fine enigma” Don Spicer. Jazz World/Guardian.

......sometimes you have to go to the edge.........and leap

Not to be missed.
Red Roaster Coffee House, St James St, Brighton. £5/£4 8pm Ko

What is a perfomer?

Noun

performer (plural performers)

1. One who performs for, or entertains, an audience.

Last week I was invited to perform at Floetics as the main poetry act. I felt very honoured as I decided to take a step back from poetry last year and instead focus on short stories. (The novel writing has always felt like my job whilst performing poetry has been a hobby, and the short stories are somewhere in between.)

Floetics happens about once a month at the Red Roaster in Kemp Town. It's a very friendly and welcoming event, hosted by poet Jasmine Cooray. Yet I felt nervous, as if I was part of the audience, observing myself. I started to question myself, asking myself who the hell is this person on stage and what does she have to say? Luckily I managed to shut my inner critic up and do a good performance anyway, and I felt that I had the audience with me. But next morning I woke up with the same question: who is this person and what does she have to say?

She is Lou Ice, performance poet. And she has this need to express herself, talk about her obsessions, fears and other grievances ...

My stage persona Lou Ice was born in 2006, and I feel like a different person now, but I'm not yet prepared to just perform as Louise Halvardsson. I prefer to keep my performance identity and my novel writing/short story identity separated. Even though my poems are heavily autobiographical, I also make a lot of things up; I feel I can hide in Lou Ice.

I've never studied performance or had any official training, am one of those people who romanticise self-taught people, but I think I have a lot to learn. Saturday I watched the play Masterclass, about opera singer Maria Callas life and teaching. Time after time she told her students that they had to feel and see what they were singing about, and totally engage with their story. That's what I'm trying to do with my poetry, but it's very easy to get distracted by the audience and things happening in the room ...

Am reading a book at the moment called Find your voice by Joanna Crosse, and she recommends that you should look at the audience as one single person, so that every person listening feels as if you are talking to them alone.

Watch this space. Lou Ice is not dead yet!


Photo: Kristen Healy

Change of Scene

I've been part of the Brighton Poetry Scene since 2004. I've been a regular at nights such as Brighton Poetry Society's Open Mic, Hammer & Tongue Slam, Floetics, Horseplay, Wordplay and of course Poets Cornered meetings. I've also done special gigs like Brighton&Hove Peace Festival, Shoreham Beer, Cider & Literature Festival, The Bass Festival, All arts Fiesta, The Poetry Marathon Poets Corner Festival etc. I've had a good time and made lots of friends.

Yet, after five years I've realised that it's bloody hard becoming a professional poet, even semi-professional. You constantly have to suck up to other people in order to get gigs and it's even harder to get poetry published. I'm torn between being a "stage poet" and a "page poet". There are few people who can really pull it off, being good both on stage and page, like Bernadette Cremin and Ros Barber.

What I want to say with this blog post is not that I'm going to stop performing or stop writing poetry, but I'm not going to dedicate as much time to poetry as I used to. It feels like I wrote my best poems and did my best performances 2-3 years ago, and since then I haven't really developed. To become better a poet I need to put in a lot of work: courses, training, studying etc. If I'd put as much effort into poetry and performing as I have put into my novels I'd be a "big star" by now :), but it's hard to succeed in more than one area.

Mainly I'm a novelist and I'm better at writing prose than poetry. I've recently discovered that there's quite a good live scene for short fiction in Brighton with events such as Short Fuse, Sparks, Are you sitting Comfortably? and the former Tight Lip. So I'll cut down on going to poetry events and focus more on the short fiction scene.

It's scary though, starting all over again. When I go to poetry events I feel very comfortable as I know a lot of people and they know me. It's funny that there's a completely different crowd that goes to short fiction events compared to poetry events. What I really like about the poetry scene is that everybody is welcome and everybody can have a go and you get a great mix of people. Of course everybody is welcome at the short fiction events as well, but the main difference is that you have to submit your stories in advance to the short fiction events and only a few get selected to be read on the night, whereas anyone can go up and do anything at a poetry open mic night. It makes the short fiction scene more competitive, but I understand that this is necessary. You can stand listening to a poem that is not to your taste for 5 minutes, but it's worse listening to a story for 15 minutes that is absolute rubbish, so I guess you need some kind of filter.

The reason I started to write poetry at all was that I needed a break from my novel writing, the satisfaction of actually completing something. Poetry used to be my hobby, but somewhere along the line I started to take myself too seriously ... I need to find the FUN again.

I also must admit that I love being on stage. I'm quite shy in real life and often worry about boring people and taking up to much space, but on stage I feel absolutely free: it's my time to speak. Being on stage is also an excuse to dress up. As I don't go clubbing on a regular basis, as I used to in my early twenties, I don't often get a chance to dress up ...

Lastly I'm interested in blog readers opinions: Why do so few people write both prose and poetry? Well, some poets write short stories, but very few write novels. And very few novelists writes poetry, but do write short stories. (As mentioned before you don't see many people from the poetry scene at short story events or many people from the short story scene at poetry events.) For me it's either poems or novels; I find that short stories are a real challenge and haven't written that many, but it's time for a change ...

Photo: Kristen Healy

First School Talk in English

I've done a lot of school visits in Sweden, talking about my writing and my debut novel Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd. Today I did my first school talk in England. In English obviously. The only thing that wasn't English about it was the audience - they were all Swedish students at Loxdale Centre in Portslade. Eight years ago I went to this school myself and it was great to be back.

I called my one-woman-show "Life after Loxdale" and spoke about my life in England, how I first made friends, found a job and a place to live. A lot of the students laughed when I showed pictures of myself as a dinner lady and a barmaid. But the focus was on my career as a writer and performance poet. How I started out going to poetry groups just to make friends and ended up being invited to perform in Berlin. How the isolation I first felt when I moved to England resulted in writing novels. And I tried to explain the battle in my head between two languages.

In between the talking I performed poems that were inspired by my life and the audience was also very lucky to hear an extract from Replacing Angel - my first English novel in progress. It seemed to go down well and one guy said it felt very real, as if I had experienced it myself.

After the talk I stayed for lunch and reminisced about the good old days. My time at Loxdale is probably the most important time of my life as I went there when I was 19, straight after finishing school in Sweden. It was the beginning of my adult life and apart from learning to speak English I also built up the confidence to stay in England and go my own way in life. I'm very pleased that I got invited back for another talk next term.

Special thanks to Saskia, my former drama teacher and friend who came to listen and took the picture.

Jelly Inc.

Jelly Inc. was formed about three weeks ago.
The intention was to put on a gig at Bombanes restaurant in Kemp Town.
It was a very chaotic meeting and we all left feeling
how is this ever going to work out!?
Another meeting and two and a half rehearsals later
we were stars in a show called What now!?

Call it poetry. Call it play. Call it cabaret. Call it whatever you want.

We all played two characters each:
professor of philosophy/barman
poetry teacher/new age woman
poetry-hating Swedish punk/waitress in love
pregnant housewife/cocktail queen

You get the idea: Expect the unexpected!

Some people who came to see the show said it was good enough
to be in Brighton Fringe next year!

Jelly Inc. is:
Pitski
MsMerized
Bernadette Cremin
Lou Ice

Did I mention that we take bookings ...?


SEE IT...HEAT IT...EAT IT...LOVE IT!

Only the teenagers missing at Peace Festival

The Peace Festival on Hove Lawns was quite peaceful on the grounds, but somebody must have been fighting in the skies. The wind was unbearable, worse than the rain.

Hopefully I kept some people warm with my poems. I was performing in the so-called Future Tent, aimed at people under 25. The only audience I didn't have was the teenagers ... The ones who came to see me seemed to be either under 10 or over 30! It was particular nice with the support from members from my local poetry group, Poets Cornered.

I did a set of poems about escaping small town life, teenage pregnancy and breaking boxes that people tend to put you in. Yet , I got the best response when I did a poem in Swedish called "A hell of a lot of holes", that is featured in my first novel. Most people seemed to think that it was a rude poem. It's not. It's more about having holes in your brain as well as in your heart.

Thanks Solera for the photo.